


burn

by entropic



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: F/M, havent read SOW yet but this is vaguely phase two, persephone-esque take on an already questionable relationship, why yes i do suffer from chronic dumbass disease why do you ask
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:01:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24676564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entropic/pseuds/entropic
Summary: "You still think he's a hero, don't you?"
Relationships: Valkyrie Cain/Lord Vile, Valkyrie Cain/Skulduggery Pleasant
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	burn

**Author's Note:**

> posting a vilekyrie fic while im in the middle of writing a separate and wholly unrelated valdug fic dont worry about it

She was warmth. The very personification of the feeling. He had always known this. Her presence elicited something within him, powerful and utterly foreign. There were moments when the heat was quiet, the soft glow of a campfire on a cold autumn evening. Often, though, it tore through him violently. She was a wildfire; scorching his bones, engulfing him. He had been burned alive, once. The sensation was remarkably similar. 

When he was of another mind, he ignored these thoughts. He ignored the way her proximity charred him from the inside. All of it suppressed alongside his other less-than-savory cognitions. They had still plagued him, when the night was silent and he had only himself for company, but he had been quite proficient at burying them before they became too troublesome. This, these internal wars, were the reason he had picked up meditation. He learned to lock that part of himself away. To hide it deep in the vault of his subconscious. It wasn’t repression, he had told himself, he merely had an incredible knack for self-control. 

He had no need for self control anymore. Nor did he particularly desire it. He had transcended such things. He could be calculative, when the situation called for it, but he found that he was far more dangerous when he allowed himself to be volatile. His strength was legendary. He could do what he pleased, take what he wanted. He struck fear into the heart of anyone unfortunate enough to gaze upon him. But she didn’t fear him. He had always liked that about her. He was death, but she stared him down, unflinching. Perhaps that was why he was so drawn to her. She was his antithesis. She was life itself. Even the fury within her shone like sunlight. 

As he approached her quarters, he could almost see it. That golden fury of hers pouring through the space beneath her door like dawn through cracks in a crumbling wall. Fire blazed in the hollow of his chest. He continued forward, seduced by it. A moth to her flame. He opened the door with a soft click. 

“Vile,” she spat. His name was a curse on her tongue. 

He stood in the doorway, silent and unmoving beneath his ever-shifting armor. It flowed around him languidly; subdued. He imagined the tendrils of shadow lazily rolling from his body and mingling with the rays of light that radiated off of her. He could feel it from here. She sat on the luxurious bed in the corner, leaning against the stone wall with her knees pulled up to her chest. He said nothing.

Her face was illuminated by the candles, flickering delicately in the ornate girandole he had sought out especially for her. The bed was draped with rich silks of the deepest red. Dozens of matching down pillows lay against an intricate iron frame, forged to look like tangled vines. Against the opposite wall sat a small desk, framed by two massive bookshelves thoroughly stocked with tomes of every imaginable genre. A large oak wardrobe, stuffed with finely tailored dresses, towered beside the room’s only window. 

The sky outside was dark. Moonlight drifted in between the thick iron bars that intersected the world beyond. He didn’t like that, something so brutal maring the idyllic view, though he knew that it was a necessary evil. He had furnished this room himself, expending a great deal of effort to ensure that it would be to her liking. 

It wasn’t. 

When she arrived, she had funneled her rage into destruction. He had found her the following morning, cross legged in the center of the room, surrounded by shreds of the silken fabric she had torn from the bed. Splintered wood and shattered glass lay at her feet. Her eyes dark. Daring him to retaliate.

He didn’t, of course. Everything in that room was easily replaceable. Besides, how could he blame her? He was no stranger to fury. He understood it. Relished in it. He wanted to cultivate that part of her; wild and untamed. He wanted to stoke the flames until she was a force of nature. The power was already inside of her. She just had to free it. They would rule the world together. Yin and yang. Day and night. Not Darquesse.  _ Her _ . 

“What do you want?” she said, her quiet voice sharp with defiance. It pulled him back to the present, but he didn’t reply. When she realized that he had no intention of breaking his silence, she straightened her legs. They stretched out in front of her, long and lean. Her black dress shifted with the movement, exposing one of her toned thighs. It was an elegant thing, the dress. It suited her. An off the shoulder piece that draped from her strong arms, her tattoo peeking out above the sleeve. 

The way the candle light danced across her exposed clavicle made something inside of him ache. She was absolutely exquisite. 

“Why do you always have to be so fucking silent? If you’re going to keep me here, the least you could do is provide some conversation.” 

“I thought you didn’t like it when I spoke.” Vile murmured.

...

_ “Shut up!” she screamed, thrashing her fists at his chestplate. With her power bound, there was not much she could do against his armor. “shut the fuck up! You’re not him! You’ll never be him! You’re nothing, Vile. He was a good man, you’re nothing but a... a pathetic mockery!” she faltered as the sentence left her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. She blinked them away fiercely and stared him down, anger burning within her. _

_ “I am him. He is me. We are one and the same, Valkyrie,” Vile whispered, voice raspy from disuse, twisted further by his armor. _

_ “You’re not. You’re a genocidal fucking monster. Your only goal is to cause as much destruction as you possibly can,” her voice was quieter, but hadn’t lost its bite. “Skulduggery would never do the things you’ve done.”  _

_ “You still think he’s a hero, don’t you?” he paused, “I came from within him; I am a tangible manifestation of his hatred, his fury. I am not a seperate being, I am who he is when the rage consumes him. How do you reconcile that?”  _

_ “Darquesse was a part of me. But I’m not her,” she almost whispered. _

_ Vile responded evenly, “she wasn’t a part of you. She was born from your mind, yes, but she was something else. An incompatible entity,” He tapped his helmet, and it dissolved lazily into the fingers of his gauntlet. The distortion in his voice melted with it. “I am a different situation entirely.” _

_ “Stop that. Don’t you dare use his voice.” _

_ “Valkyrie,” he spoke softly, shifting towards her. She jerked away. “I am him. I have all of his memories. All of his feelings.” _

_ “No, you don’t. You can’t.” _

_ “I do. He is desperately in love with you, Valkyrie. The only difference between us is that he was too much of a coward to say it.” _

_ “Shut up.” _

_ “Do you think I’m lying?” _

_ “Yes.” _

_ “I would never lie to you. Do you think that he could say the same?” _

_... _

She slid forward on the bed, pushing herself up gracefully. With measured steps, she walked to the window and leaned against the iron frame, her body angled away from him. 

“I don’t like it when you pretend that you’re him,” she said, staring out into the night. Her hair shone in the moonlight, so dark it almost glowed. “as long as we’re not under any illusions about your current identity, there won’t be a problem.”

“We’ve had this discussion before,” Vile said. He hadn’t moved since he opened the door, unnaturally still and, he was sure, imposing, “you’re aware of my point of view on the matter.”

“Discussion?” she laughed. The sound cut through him like a blade. He hadn’t realized how much he missed her laugh. “If you hadn’t stolen my power, I would have killed you months ago.”

It was a bluff, and Vile knew it. She was powerful. There was no denying that. Given the right set of circumstances, she would certainly be capable of ending him. But the physical aspect of the equation was never up for dispute. She  _ wouldn’t _ have done it. She knew this too, of course. To destroy him was to destroy Skulduggery. Despite her strength, he knew she wasn’t strong enough for that. She clung to the hope that she could bring him back to her. Sweet, foolish girl. She still didn’t understand. Skulduggery had never left. 

“You cannot kill what is already dead,” he said simply, voice low.

She turned her head to look at him, “for a dead thing, you sure are a relentless pain in the ass,” her body remained angled towards the window, dark eyes burning through the curtain of hair that framed her face, “you can come in. Sit at the desk. It freaks me out when you just stand in the doorway like that.”

Vile complied. Closing the door behind him, he glided to the desk and sat. 

She was quiet for a moment, and he could see a debate raging within her. She tried to disguise it with a mask of cold indifference, but she had never been terribly difficult to read. 

“Would you-” she paused, sucking in a breath, “would you take off the helmet?”

“Why?” Vile asked.

“If we’re going to have a conversation, I would rather not do it with a suit of armor. It’s creepy.”

“Talking to a skull is better?”

“Well,” she hesitated, “yes.” she faced him, her back against the wall. She slid down until she was comfortably seated on the stone floor, one leg straight out in front of her, her arm resting at shoulder height on her bent knee. She looked… casual.

He hesitated for a moment. Cautiously, he reached up to touch the shadows where they met his jawbone. The helm poured downwards to join the rest of his armor. 

She looked at him, eyes tracing the stark white of his exposed skull above the shadows. Catching herself, she tore her gaze away and stared pointedly at the floor. 

“You miss him,” he said softly. It wasn’t a question. 

“Astute observation,” Valkyrie deadpanned, “figure that one out all by yourself, did you?” 

“It doesn’t take a detective to ascertain your motivations.”

“I was being sarcastic, you prick.” 

Vile tilted his head, and something in her expression shifted slightly. She gave her head an almost imperceptible shake, ridding herself of the thought that had crossed her mind.

“Don’t get any ideas. I’m talking to you because I’m unbelievably bored, not because you’ve convinced me of anything,” Valkyrie said, “you’re not him, and frankly, you’re a shit substitute. But I really don’t have many options right now.”

Vile didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure  _ how _ to respond to that. She had a way of scrambling his mind. He was a fool in her presence, but he could never allow her to see that. He understood why she had invited him in like this, asked to hear his voice unobstructed. She was lonely. Despite her belief that he was a different man, he still possessed this body. This voice. She wanted to play pretend. He could do that.

“I can do anything he can, you know.” 

Valkyrie scoffed, “you can’t make me laugh.”

“I don’t know that you’ve allowed me to try.”

“Alright, well, consider this permission.”

“Comedy should be organic, should it not? This is hardly a fair test” 

“That’s what I thought,” Valkyrie said, not bothering to hide the contempt in her voice.

Vile was silent for a moment, contemplating. 

Leaning back in the chair, he spoke, “have you heard the one about the skeleton in a bar?”

She stared at him, taken aback. Her mouth opened but words seemed to elude her.

“Well,” he continued, ignoring her stunned silence, “he ordered a beer and a mop.” 

He watched the corner of her mouth twitch upwards into the faintest hint of a smile. God, she was stunning. It almost hurt to look at her. He felt the deep burn in his chest amplify until he thought that it might burst through his rib cage. He imagined this; the flames consuming him, splintering his bones and sending shards of shrapnel throughout the room. Her very proximity undoing him completely. It didn’t seem utterly improbable. 

She found her voice again, dragging him from his thoughts, “derivative. And your delivery needs serious work,” the smile still played at her lips, “but honestly I didn’t think you were capable of humor, so you’ve exceeded my incredibly low expectations.” 

He tilted his head again, “why would you think that I’m incapable of humor?” 

“Because you’re evil, and I didn’t even know you could speak until a few months ago. It’s not a ridiculous assumption to make,” her voice was dry, “I’m still not totally convinced. It really wasn’t a good joke.”

“You wound me, my dear” Vile responded, a little too earnestly. He knew that it had been a mistake the moment the words passed his teeth. With that one sentence, her demeanor changed entirely. A shadow passed over her features. The darkness melted the smile that was just beginning to emerge. 

“Don’t call me that,” her voice was bitter.

He said nothing.

She stood, eyes burning a hole through his skull, “get out. I’m going to bed.”

Vile remained silent, but compiled. The door slammed shut behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> i really shouldnt be allowed to drink and write at the same time.
> 
> sexy evil skeleton fucker gang 2k20


End file.
